I pushed Milo out of the way, and Daisy was instantly on her feet. I wrapped my arms around her before she could dive at Bobby, who still seemed to be her main target.
The way she wriggled made it impossible to hold her in my arms. She turned her head and nearly bit my shoulder, but I grabbed a clump of her hair on the back of her head.
She twisted around, pulling out chunks of her hair, and I had to take more drastic measures. I slammed her head down onto the floor, pressing her face to the hard wood, and I knelt on her back.
I felt guilty about it because this was a five-year-old kid I was fighting, but it felt a lot more like pinning down a piranha.
“Are you okay?” Milo jumped onto the bed with Bobby, but other than being freaked out, Bobby looked alright.
Daisy kept trying to bite me and clawed at the floor. Her pudgy little fingers bled, but she didn’t notice.
Abruptly, she stopped. She lay perfectly still and silent, just long enough for me to think that I had killed her, and then she started crying. Not like a whiny brat that didn’t get their way, but like a scared little kid that had gotten hurt.
I looked to Milo for help, unsure if I should get off her and risk her attacking again.
Within seconds of Daisy crying, Mae appeared in the bedroom.
“What the hell are you doing?” Mae shouted and pushed me off Daisy. It was much harder than she needed to, and I went flying into the wall, cracking my skull on the plaster.
Mae scooped Daisy up off the floor, and she had gone back to looking like an ordinary little girl. She hung limp in Mae’s arms, big wet tears running down her face as she sobbed. Her curls were sticking to damp cheeks, and her fingers hadn’t healed yet.
“That little monster tried to eat me!” Bobby said. He held his arm up to slow the bleeding, and Milo stood in front of him on the bed.
“I don’t care what she was doing!” Mae held Daisy fiercely to her. Tears stood in Mae’s eyes, and she glared at us. “She is just a child!”
“She is not just a child,” I said. “She nearly killed us all!”
“Oh, she’s just hungry.” Mae brushed it off. “And Bobby is a human. She’s not used to being around them.”
“I don’t care what she’s used to being around!” I shouted. “What would you have done if she killed Bobby? Or if she kills somebody else?” Mae shook her head, unwilling to look at me.
“I’m going to go feed her.” That’s all Mae said on the subject, then turned and carried Daisy out of the room.
“That was so ridiculous,” I sighed, running a hand through my hair.
Milo inspected the wound on Bobby’s arm, but despite the blood, it was fairly shallow. The intoxicating, sweet scent of him filled room, and my stomach rumbled.
It had been months since I’d bitten Bobby, but often times when I was hungry, I found myself craving him. I hungered for Bobby’s blood more than any other human. Standing this close to him, smelling him, reminded me that it had been over a week since I had eaten.
Milo had not taken it well when I bit Bobby before. Sharing a human with another vampire is unsettling. For weeks afterward, he’d followed me around like a puppy, causing many a fight between the three of us. Biting intensifies the feelings you already for each other. Eventually it faded, but even now, I felt protective of Bobby.
As Milo looked over Bobby’s wounds, he wrinkled his nose in disgust, smelling Daisy on the bite.
“You need to get it washed up and put a Band-Aid on,” Milo said, dropping Bobby’s arm.
“Alright.” Bobby climbed down off the bed. He looked down at his pants, splattered with droplets of blood, and sighed. “I’m gonna have to throw these pants out! Dammit! I loved these pants.”
Bobby took the whole “getting attacked by a vampire” thing pretty well, but he actually had more experience with them than either Milo or me. He got involved with them when he was eighteen, so he had two more years dealing with this than we did.
He went into the bathroom to get cleaned up, and I looked back at Milo. “Mae has completely lost her mind,” I said in a hushed voice, but Milo didn’t say anything. “You can’t tell me you’re on her side.”
He hopped off the bed and wiped off the blood on his side. Using the mirror hanging on the wall, he studied his wounds, and some would’ve been serious if he wasn’t a vampire. The bite marks on his shoulders and arms were nearly healed already.
“I’m not on anybody’s side,” Milo said at length.
“Daisy almost killed your boyfriend,” I said. Milo turned back to look at me, meeting my eyes evenly.
“So did you.”
“That’s different.” I shook my head. “I was dying. She’s an out of control child.”
“Maybe,” Milo admitted. “But what are we gonna do about it? You want me to go kill her?”
I didn’t know what I wanted him to do, but Daisy clearly wasn’t safe. This was the first time anything like this had happened since we’d been here, but she was crazier than any vampire I’d seen.
I didn’t have a good answer, and Milo didn’t want to talk about it. I went back to my room to sulk, since there wasn’t anything better to do. Peter came up a little while later to fix the bedroom door, and he warned us that Bobby shouldn’t be left alone anymore.
I was mad at Mae, so I wanted to spend a long time hiding out in my room. Then I realized that she was mad at me, so hiding would probably please her. To spite her, I decided to get up.
When I got down stairs, Daisy sat in the dining room. Coloring books and crayons were spread out all over the round table. Her hair had been tied up with a ribbon, and she had changed into a frilly pink and white sundress.
Her fingers healed up completely, making it possible for her to hold the crayons as she colored. She sang “Across the Universe” in an angelically perfect voice, and I’m sure that her Beatles repertoire was all Mae’s influence.
It wasn’t that I didn’t understand where Mae was coming from. Daisy had been terminally ill, and if Mae hadn’t turned her, she would’ve died. Daisy was her great-grandchild, and she was an adorable, sweet girl… when she wasn’t a terrifying demon from hell. She was just much too young to have any impulse control, and she was going to be stuck looking like a perfect five-year-old for the rest of her life.
“Hi, Alice,” Daisy chirped. She kept coloring and didn’t look up at me, but she’d stopped singing. Under the table, I could see her legs swinging back and forth.